July 14, 2015

How to Enable Google’s Chrome App Launcher on Linux

For those wanting more of the Chromium effect on their existing Linux desktops, you can add the Google App Launcher. See an article below on how to add it.

The Chrome App Launcher offers a super handy way to launch
your favourite Chrome Apps, sift through your engorged collection of
bookmarks and trigger a web search, all without having to open the
browser itself.
It’s included out of the box on Chrome OS, and Windows and Mac have
been able to add it for some time. On Linux the feature remains disabled
by default, but getting it is easy. And we’ll show you how.

Enable Chrome App Launcher on Linux

It should be obvious, but you do need to be running the latest
release of Google Chrome (any channel) to add the app launcher. Google
provides Debian and RPM installers suitable for most Linux
distributions. Head on over to this link to grab one.
The simplest method (assuming you’re running the latest Stable
release) is to click the link below (or copy the URL into a new tab) and
hit the ‘Get App Launcher’ button on the page. This will add
the feature to your system.

Alternatively, if for whatever reason the above step doesn’t work,
you can enable it manually. To do this, paste the following address into
the omnibar and then hit return/enter:

chrome://flags/#enable-app-list

Click the blue link titled ‘enable’ that is listed underneath
the “enable the app Launcher” heading. Finally, relaunch Chrome when
prompted to do so.

Positioning the App Launcher

After the item has been ‘installed’ you’ll be able to add it to your
application launcher or desktop panel by finding the launcher item
in your desktop app menu, overlay or Dash. You can place it anywhere you
like: at the top of the Unity Launcher, the far left of your Cinnamon
desktop panel, or slap bang in the middle of your GNOME Shell dock.

Using the App Launcher

With the launcher item now added and in place on your desktop all that’s left is to click on it.
The apps list will open in rough proximity to its icon, though this
isn’t always the case. For example, on Cinnamon the launcher often
appears on the right screen, despite the App Launcher icon being clicked
on the left. Given that the feature is yet to be enabled by default on
Linux bugs should be expected.

If you find the positioning is really off, you may want to turn on the “Enable the experimental app launcher position” flag. This experiment positions the apps list in the centre of the screen.

chrome://flags/#enable-centered-app-list

Anatomy of the launcher

We mentioned in the introduction that the Chrome App Launcher is able
to do a few handy things. And while those of you on Linux won’t get to
take advantage of the “Ok Google” feature available in the Chrome OS launcher, you do get most of the other features.Folders let you group your apps into custom
directories, like ‘Google Apps’, ‘Media Apps’, etc. Enabling the ‘App
Folder Sync’ flag allows you to keep these groupings between desktops
and OSes.
Another flag Linux users can enable to achieve parity with Windows users is ‘App Info’.
This flag appends an extra entry to the menu that appears when
right-clicking on apps within the list. When selected a small overlay
will appear in-launcher to give brief information on permissions the app
in question has access to, shortcut app opening preferences (‘Window’,
‘In Tab’, etc.), and an uninstall button to save you having to use the Extensions page.
To help differentiate between Chrome Apps (those that can run
offline, in their own window and integrate with your OS) and “glorified
bookmarks”, look out for the shortcut badge on icons:

Web Apps (badged) and Chrome Apps (unbadged)

The search bar at the top of the list will return results from the
web, your bookmarks, installed applications, and the Chrome Web Store.

Click
on the menu icon to access some app launcher specific settings
(including “supervised user” access) or send feedback on it to Google.

Removing the launcher

To remove the Chrome App Launcher simply right-click on (or tear off)
the list shortcut from your panel or dock. If you enabled the launcher
through a flag, you can also disable it.